Sixty visitors from Lymm's Twin Town, Meung-sur-Loire

In the first week of June over sixty visitors from Lymm's Twin Town, Meung-sur-Loire, visited Lymm for a four day stay.

Lymm is twinned with Meung which is a small town in the Loire Valley of France about ten miles from Orleans. 2011 marked the 43rd anniversary of the relationship. This year it was the turn of the French to visit England and next year it will be the turn of the English to again visit France.

The visit started with a Reception at the Town Hall in Warrington where the guests and their Lymm hosts were welcomed by the Mayor, Cllr Mike Biggin. They learned a little of the history of the building and something about the traditions associated with a Mayor.

Trip to the Lake District

On Friday two full coaches travelled up to the Lake District for a boat trip on Ullswater and a visit to Rheged, the Cumbrian Discovery Centre. On the Saturday evening a dinner was held at the Mere Club where the guests of honour were the Chairman of Lymm Parish Council, Cllr David Openshaw and his wife. The toast to Meung was given by Lymm Twin Town Chairman, Peter Birchall and the toast to Lymm by Meung's President, Jean-Claude Vivet. On the Thursday and Saturday the Lymm hosts were free to entertain their own guests as they wanted.

A huge Success

Peter Birchall said, "The visit was a huge success which was helped by the wonderful weather. It was particularly pleasing that many young families with children were involved which is giving fresh impetus to the twinning relationship. If anyone is interested in finding out more please ring Peter Birchall on 01928 579164 or 07816 257714. Alternatively get in contact via email.

Picture shows Lymm hosts and their visitors with the Mayor at the Town Hall Reception.

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Things Are Heating Up!!

Lymm’s 10 day long Summer Festival

It’s that glorious time of year again when Lymm village becomes a 10 day long celebration of all our lovely Cheshire village has to offer. Now a well established occasion, Lymm Festival hosts a massive range of attractive events and creative talents designed to appeal to all ages and tastes. This year’s jam packed programme features around 50 events taking place in the village of Lymm, including some guest appearances by artists with national and international reputations. No doubt about it, this year’s exciting line up will be a great opportunity for visitors and residents alike to truly enjoy a fantastic selection of summer festival activities.

Special Events

Not only is there a fantastic line up throughout the full 10 days of Lymm Festival, but there is also a whole array of ‘Special Events’ that will be featuring in the time leading up to it and during. Here’s a sneaky peak at some tasty little appetisers before the main course!

Festival Scarecrow Trail

Friday 17th June to Sunday 3rd July
All around Lymm
£5 registration fee (deadline Friday 10th June)

The legendary Festival Scarecrow Trail will once again be gracing the gardens of Lymm, following this year’s theme of ‘Kids TV Characters’! From Tom and Jerry to Lilo and Stitch, expect to find Hercules hiding in the hedgerow and Shrek soaking up some sunshine! So grab your pitch forks and get involved! Trail maps are available from the Festival Box Office and Rush Green Garage. Prize giving will be on Saturday 2nd July at 12noon at Art in the Garden. For more information, please email scarecrows@lymmladiescircle.co.uk

Street Fun and Food Fest

Thursday 23rd June
Lymm Cross
6pm to 8:30pm

Nor for the Foodies!! Lymm Street Fun and Food Fest is back, dishing up some tasty nosh on Thursday 23rd June. There will be stalls set up around the Cross from a wide selection of participating food outlets in the village, all selling some delicious snacks and tasters from their menus. An additional part to the event will be the unveiling of the Big Picture created by nearly 50 local artists. Free for all, it’s a great opening to the festival! And for your dinner date entertainment we welcome the wildly popular Bread and Butter Theatre Company. The green fingered gardening experts Pete and Ged Moss will be on hand to answer all your gardening queries, complete with their very own musical wheelbarrow too! Also joining in on the ol’ shin dig will be those brilliantly bonkers Bollin Morris Dancers. Now that’s one tasty combination!

Get on your bike!

Saturday 25th June
Ridgeway Grundy Park, Maltman’s Road, Lymm
12noon to 4pm

For all you active folk, Get on your Bike is a family fun day featuring the fabulously mental Best Dressed Bike Parade! Let the wheels meet the wardrobe, it’s time to sparkle up those bike spokes and get some tassels on them tyres! Prizes will be awarded for the top three bikes and entry forms will be available from The Sweet Shop, Lymm Library and the Festival Box Office. You can expect a massive selection of sporting activities on the day too, including an outdoor skating rink, circus work shop, face painting, kite making and much much more. Refreshments will be available and donations at gate - minimum 50p per person.

Ian McMillan & Tony Husband present ‘A Short History of Here’

Friday 1st July
Lymm Baptist Church, Higher Lane (car parking at the rear)
7:30pm
£12 or £17 with a light meal at 6pm (limited availability)

A comedy cartoon sketch for audiences of all ages. A Short History of Here is a hilarious live-action cartoon of the community starring its friendly folks, fantastic fortunes, dazzling ambition and tenderest moments. Created by Yorkshire poet, broadcaster & comedian Ian McMillan and Cartoonist of the Year Tony Husband. A fast-flowing, rapid-rafting adventure in which two top funny men reflect upon local stories, legends, rivers and romance. There is a chance to meet the artists at a buffet supper before the event at a cost of £5.00 added to the ticket price. Book soon as there is limited availability.

An Evening with Simon Plumb and Friends

Saturday 2nd July
Lymm Hall, Rectory Lane, Lymm
7pm until midnight
£14 (ticket holders must be 16years or over)

Lymm Festival is delighted to be welcomed back to the gardens of the beautiful Lymm Hall, for a grand night of entertainment devised by one of Lymm’s most prolific and popular duos. Simon Plumb is the unstoppable force behind the famous Rugby Club Pantomimes, and such shows as Mam I’m Ere and The Greatest Show on Earth-ish. He and Norman Haddock have been writing and performing comedy sketches together for many years and have joined forces again to entertain us at this very special venue. Bring your own picnic! No gazebos or BBQs allowed.

Dancing the Trail

Sunday 3rd July
Along the Trans-Pennine Trail from Mill Lane, Heatley to the Thelwall Viaduct
2pm to 4pm

Slip on your dancing shoes and hit the tiles of the Trail at a major event of this year’s festival, Dancing the Trail! Whether you fancy strolling along the path, or participating in the dance, come and help celebrate one of the most well used and highly prized amenities in Lymm. There will be almost every kind of dancing along the way, and every sector of the community is being encouraged to take part. In specially devised pieces, we hope to achieve a continuous mass of movement from one boundary to the other, turning something ordinary into something quite extraordinary!

Stephen Hough – Piano Recital

Sunday 3rd July
Lymm United Reform Church, Brookfield Road, Lymm
3pm
£15 / £5 for students

After all the success of last year’s performance, the King of Keys is back for a second year! Expect to be blown away by the internationally acclaimed pianist Stephen Hough. Opening with Beethoven’s ‘Moonlight’ Sonata, he will then turn to a brand new work of his own, Sonata for Piano (Broken Branches), before plunging into the hallucinatory whirlwind world of Skryabin. Finally he will bring the recital to a resounding climax with Liszt’s Piano Sonata in B minor. Not surprisingly, last year‘s concert sold out, so get your tickets early! This event is held in celebration of the lives of Margaret and Roy Holt who were great supporters of live music in Lymm. Refreashments available and donations welcome. Proceeds will be divided between Marie Curie Cancer Care and Lymm Festival.

The fun doesn’t end there!

Phew! What a line up! And there’s still more to come! The above proceedings are all ‘Special Events’ of Lymm Festival, so expect tonnes more fab family fun to follow during the 10 day festival from Thursday 23rd June to Sunday 3rd July. Enjoy!

View the festival brochure here.

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Raising over over £5,000 for charity

Members of the public came out in force on Easter Monday to support Lymm and District Round Table’s duck race - helping to raise over £5,000 for charity in the process.

Led by main sponsor, Brolley, who provide family and household services, a host of businesses also supported the event, helping to make it the most successful duck race ever.

“We’re really grateful to everyone who got involved

“We’re really grateful to everyone who got involved this year, from the people who bought ducks, to the stall-holders who helped to ensure the crowds had a great day,” said Dave Healey, organiser and Round Table member. “We’re particularly thankful to the local businesses who managed to sponsor this year in what are difficult times.

“As a result of such generosity we’re delighted that such a huge sum of money – a record for this event – will be making its way to local charity and community groups this year.”

The winners

The winning ducks were numbers 822 (first), 396 (second) and 217 (third), with the super duck winner named as The Best of Warrington website, and corporate duck winners Sweeney Todd Barbers and Stan James bookmakers.

Raising funds for breast cancer and testicular cancer

Prizes were also awarded to those who guessed the correct finish times of special Lymm Ladies Circle pink and blue ducks which helped to raise funds for breast cancer and testicular cancer respectively.

The Lymm and District Round Table is one of the most buoyant in the country with a large and enthusiastic membership and regular social and charity events planned throughout the year.

For more information on the Round Table visit Round Table Website or contact Rik Wilson on 07766 461944 or info@lymmroundtable.co.uk.

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The Candidates for 2011

Ian Marks - Liberal Democrats

Cllr Ian Marks commitment to Lymm ward has never been in doubt, but he may have even more time to devote to our ward after May 5th.

For the last five years Cllr Marks has led the Lib Dem-Conservative coalition on Warrington Borough Council, but Labour are confident of ending that spell this time. They need just one seat to take control.

It is a difficult time for the Lib Dems. These are the first local elections they have faced as part of a government since the Second World War. The party has often benefited from protest votes against Conservative or Labour governments. Now they are part of it.

So it will be a testing time for Cllr Marks who’s been a Lymm councillor for 28 years. He has sat on the parish council even longer and fought to represent the area in parliament three times. He’s chairman of the Lymm Festival and recently became a member of the new Local Enterprise Partnership for Warrington and Cheshire.

In 2007 Cllr Marks had a majority of 853, but last year his colleague Bob Barr won with a much more modest margin of 272 over Conservative challenger Harish Sharma who is standing again.

Harish Sharma - Conservatives

Mr Sharma has only lived in the Lymm area for 4 years but has become very busy on the local scene. He is a very active member of the Governing Body of Lymm High School, Warrington’s Stronger Together Neighbourhoods Board and the Lymm Youth Club.

A chartered accountant, his hobby is collecting watches. So has his time come to represent Lymm?

Sue Williams - Labour

Not if Su Williams has anything to do with it. I’m tempted to say everyone knows Labour’s candidate. Every year Su hosts “Art in the Garden” at her home as part of the Lymm Festival. Part of the display is work done by prisoners. Trying to turn round damaged lives is a cause Su spends much time on.

She has also played a major part in turning round the fortunes of Lymm’s Youth and Community Centre and works with the juniors on a Wednesday night.

James Ashington - UKIP

When Ian Marks last stood in Lymm, his Conservative opponent was James Ashington. Mr Ashington is now flying UKIP’s colours. He is an experienced Lymm Parish councillor having been chairman 3 times and founded the Lymm Festival. He has the widest grin in local politics and hopes to still be smiling on May 6th.

• The political overview above was kindly provided by Jim Hancock.

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Alan Knight exhibition at Collect Art

After the successful exhibition last August in ‘The One Man Show’ Alan Knight’s work will once again be on show. Collect Art is very pleased to be exhibiting his fabulous work on Friday 18th March at 6.30pm.

Profile of Alan Knight

Artist Alan Knight was born in Swinton, Lancashire in 1949. In his early 30’s he’d had enough of a career as a professional musician and returned to his first love, painting.

The completion of an Art Foundation course at Salford University gave him the determination and single mindedness needed to pursue a career as an artist. He started to paint furiously and also developed a huge appetite for studying art, looking at all types, styles and era’s of visual creativity.

For around 10 years his paintings were abstract and he made constructions and assemblages, but gradually what he could see around him began to assert itself more and more into his work and he felt the need for his art to be “rooted in the real”. It was clear to him that abstraction had become a dead end. He moved to a representational form of expression, focusing on land and seascapes.

Valuing spontaneity and freedom of movement, he paints using knives rather than brushes to enable a quick clean response

Alan has a love for oil paint, finding immense pleasure in the substance, its richness and plasticity, and likes to apply it thickly with a painting knife, enjoying the texture and richness of colour that this method produces. Valuing spontaneity and freedom of movement, he paints using knives rather than brushes to enable a quick clean response. Alan is passionate about the painting process and always needs to be excited by a subject before beginning painting in order to convey to the viewer the sense of pleasure that he has felt in making the painting.

Artists’ who have responded to nature with passionate intensity such as Cezanne, Soutine, Van Gough, Courbet, Canadian artist Tom Thomson and Scottish painter Joan Eardley are closest to his heart.

An artist to look out for

An article in the EN Magazine, entitled “Where there’s muck there’s brass, investing in Northern Art” pinpointed Alan as an artist to look out for. From this point on he has had a successful "The One Man Show" at Wendy J Levy Gallery and a sell out "The One Man Show" at Collect Art in Lymm. He is without doubt one of the rising stars on the Northern Art scene.

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